A general laundry treatment apparatus refers to an apparatus that includes a cabinet defining the external appearance of the apparatus and a receiving compartment provided inside the cabinet and that serves to remove odors, wrinkles, moisture, or the like from clothes by supplying steam and hot air to the clothes received in the receiving compartment.
In the case of worn clothes, odors, wrinkles, or the like may remain in the clothes, which may be unpleasant for a user who wears the same clothes. To overcome this, the user has to wash the clothes, which reduces the lifespan of the clothes and increases the maintenance costs of the clothes. In addition, the user has to additionally perform, for example, ironing in order to remove wrinkles generated in the clothes. A laundry treatment apparatus may be used to solve these problems.
To remove odors, wrinkles, moisture, or the like from clothes received therein, the laundry treatment apparatus may eject steam to the clothes and use hot air to dry the clothes which contain moisture due to the ejected steam.
When steam is ejected to the clothes received in the laundry treatment apparatus, water particles as water vapor are bound with odor particles remaining in fibrous tissues and, in turn, the odor particles are removed from the clothes as the water particles bound with the odor particles evaporate in the process of drying the clothes by supplying hot air thereto.
In addition, when steam is ejected to the clothes received in the laundry treatment apparatus, wrinkles in the clothes are reduced or removed in the process of drying the clothes, wetted by the steam, using, for example, hot air.
As exemplarily illustrated in FIG. 1, a conventional laundry treatment apparatus 100′ includes a cabinet defining the external appearance of the apparatus, and a receiving compartment 10′, in which clothes are received, is defined in an upper region of the cabinet. The receiving compartment 10′ is opened and closed by a door 60′. An electric machine room 20′ is located in a lower region of the cabinet. The electric machine room 20′ receives, for example, a steam supply device (not illustrated) to generate steam to be supplied to the receiving compartment 10′ and a hot air supply device (not illustrated) to supply hot air to the receiving compartment 10′. The steam supply device (not illustrated) received in the electric machine room 20′ is adapted to eject steam through a steam ejection unit 50′ received in the receiving compartment 10′.
The conventional laundry treatment apparatus 100′, however, has the following problems.
First, the conventional laundry treatment apparatus requires the receiving compartment in which clothes are received and, thus, is bulky.
Second, the conventional laundry treatment apparatus must be operated even when it is desired to refresh only a single shirt or pair of pants, which results in wasted power.
Third, the conventional laundry treatment apparatus has low portability and is limited in terms of the times and places that it can be used by users.